A friend of mine’s son recently returned from an extended absence which basically removed him from nearly all aspects of technology, including the Internet, for a bit longer than 5 years. Upon return, observing him restore his awareness of technologies and absorb all things new developed over the past 5 years was both exciting and moving.

To be fair, the guy grew up in an Internet world, with access to online resources including Facebook, Twitter, and other social applications.

The interesting part of his re-introduction to the “wired” world was watching the comprehension flashes he went through when absorbing the much higher levels of application and data integration, and speed of network access.

As much as all of us continue to complain about terrible access speeds, it is remarkable to see how excited he became when learning he could get 60Mbps downloads from just a cable modem. And the ability to download HD movies to a PC in just a few moments, or stream HD videos through a local device.

Not to mention the near non-need to have CATV period to continue enjoying nearly any network or alternative programming desired.

Continuing to observe the transformation, it took him about 2 minutes to nail up a multipoint video call with 4 of his friends, take a stroll through my eBook library, and prepare a strategy for his own digital move into cloud-based applications, storage, and collaboration.

Looking back to my personal technical point of reference at the point this kid dropped out, I dug up blog articles I’ve posted with titles such as:

“Flattening the American Internet” (discussing the need for more Internet Exchange Points in the US)

“IXPs and Disaster Recovery” (the role IXPs could and should play in global disasters)

“2009 – The Year of IPv6 and Internet Virtualization”

“The Law of Plentitude and Chaos Theory”

“Why I Hate Kayaks” (the hypocrisy of some environmentalists)

“Contributing to a Cause with Technology – The World Community GRID” (the cloud before the cloud)

“Blackberrys, PDA Phones, and Frog Soup”

And so on…

We have come a long way technically over those years, but the amazing thing is the near immediacy of the young man absorbing those changes. I was almost afraid with all the right brain flashes that he would have a breakdown, but the enjoyment he showed diving into the new world of “apps” and anytime, anywhere computing appears to only be accelerating.

Now the questions are starting to pop up. “Can we do this now?” “It would be nice if this was possible.”

Maybe because he grew up in a gaming world, or maybe because he was dunked into the wired world about the same time he learned to stand on his own feet. Maybe the synaptic connections in his brain are just much better wired than those of my generation.

Perhaps the final, and most important revelation for me, is that young people have a tremendous capacity to exploit the technology resources developed in just a few short years. Collaboration tools which astound my generation are slow and boring to the new crew. Internet is expected, it is a utility, and it is demanded at broadband speeds which, again, to somebody whose first commercial modem was a large card capable of 300 baud (do you even know what baud means?) is still mind boggling.

The new generations are going to have a lot more fun than we did, on a global scale.

Pacific-Tier met up with Chris Ueland at his offices in Studio City, California

Pacific-Tier: Chris, can you tell us a little about yourself? Where did you come from?

Chris Ueland: Sure, absolutely. I am a New York native, and I moved to LA when I was 18. I started on the Internet with an open source project called ML.ORG, when I was a young teenager, and that got me hooked into the Internet.

I started working from my parent’s house on nights and weekends on this open source project, and started ICom.Com, which was funded by my former partner.

Pacific-Tier: Excellent. Now you’re working with NetDNA LLC. Tell us a little about NetDNA LLC, and what you do?

Chris Ueland: NetDNA is a pretty cool company. We’re doing content delivery, and we have 10 data centers around the world, and we are focusing on speeding up content to end users.

Pacific-Tier: Who would be your customer? What kind of company would come to NetDNA?

Chris Ueland: Primarily the Alexa top 5000 sites. Right now our customers are primarily advertising and video sites. We are looking to also get into full site acceleration for some of these large web sites.

Pacific-Tier: And what does that mean? What does full-site acceleration mean?

Chris Ueland: We’re constantly looking for any kind of way to speed up a website. And the latest cutting edge stuff to deliver that website as quickly as possible to the end user.

Pacific-Tier: So you are there to try to make the end-user experience better, as well as facilitate the product your customers have?

Chris Ueland: Absolutely. And making it as easy as possible on our customers, where there’s not a whole lot of infrastructure changes on their end.

Pacific-Tier: So you’ve kind of a serial entrepreneur your whole life. You’ve started several companies, gone on to other projects – what drives you to be an entrepreneur?

Chris Ueland: I think it’s just in my DNA. I’m always looking for ways to do things that are outside the beaten path.

Pacific-Tier: That’s pretty exciting. Is it because the large companies don’t offer you the challenge, or is it because you just have things you want to do that the large companies won’t support?

Chris Ueland: I think it’s the fact that as an entrepreneur you can create your own structure. And you can develop things that work really well with your personality. For me, I really enjoy building things, and the companies that I create allow me to harness those talents and just build things all day. Which I love!

Pacific-Tier: The economy has been kind of sketchy lately, and you have a lot of young guys graduating from university, and thinking about going into the work force, and a lot of guys who are thinking about starting their own companies. What advice would you give to a young entrepreneur or graduate who is getting ready to hit the street?

Chris Ueland: Yeah, the first piece of advice is to start as early as possible. You are going to make a lot of mistakes. Get in there and get your hands dirty.

The second (piece of advice) is to develop a real skill set, where you can take that skill set and bring to anybody, anywhere in the world, and provide value for them.

The third is really to build something. Don’t just shuffle things around, genuinely build something big. I think that is really going to fix and help the economy.

Chris Ueland: Get out there guys and build stuff. That’s what’s going to get us out of this rut that we’re in. I really look at the telecom guys and entrepreneurs as the answer to creating things, and continuing to build this country up.

Pacific-Tier: Great advice – thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure talking with you today.

An innovator and an activist, Chris approaches each of his pursuits by asking the question, “how can we help people?” His years as President of Globat LLC, a company he co-founded with friend and business partner Ben Neumann, helped the company net numerous awards and recognitions based on the quality of service the company provided to nearly 100,000 customers around the world. As the Vice President of the Greater Valley Glen Council in the City of Los Angeles, Chris has also worked hard to improve the quality of life for people in the area he represents. Mr. Ueland has enjoyed leadership and ownership roles in successful companies such as Globat LLC, Icom.com, iBoost.com, and DefyingGravity LLC, many of which were ultimately acquired by other companies.

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John Savageau’s Profile

John Savageau is a life long telecom and Internet geek, with a deep interest in the environment and all things green. Whether drilling into the technology of human communications, or describing a blue whale off Catalina Island, Savageau will try to present complex ideas in terms that are easily appreciated and understood.

John Savageau is President of Pacific-Tier Communications based in Honolulu, Hawaii
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